In Autumn 2018, when my youngest son was still a toddler, I walked into the little cubby hole where we kept our washing machine (known in German as a Waschküche!). There I saw him, bent mischievously over a packet of washing powder, eating it out of it with his hand, like a tiny, naughty, but kind of polite kitten. I guess the washing powder itself didn’t taste delicious enough for him to get all hungry puppy about it, lol. I scooped him into my arms, googled the sentence “my toddler just ate washing powder–what should I do?”, phoned the poisons hotline, and, eventually, took him down the A&E, known in Germany as Notaufnahme.
I told the people at A&E that I wasn’t sure how much he had eaten. Had I caught him at the beginning of his washing powder feast, in the middle, or at the end? I told them what type of washing powder it was–Weiße Riese. I had melodramatic ideas about them pumping out his stomach, but in the end, they just gave him an injection–they had to call another nurse in to hold him down so the doctor could inject him, that’s how strong my little boy was, and how much he hates injections. They told me, delightfully, to let him sleep in my bed that night. We got in a taxi and got home at about one in the morning.
It was a long time ago now, and to be quite honest, I am no longer sure about the following details:
(1) Was it Autumn–or was, it possibly, late Summer? I know I didn’t have a coat on, and on the way home, started shivering, and just, like, popped myself into a taxi.
(2) Did I ring the poison hotline? I think I did, but it might have been the Bereitschaftsdienst. Or even, possibly, just 112. I also can’t remember if I spoke to a woman or a man. I think it was a man, but I can’t be sure.
(3) Was the washing powder Weiße Riese? I know it was one of those big boxes and when I think of the moment, I remember–or maybe the truth is, imagine–him over a BIG box? And I know it wasn’t Persil or Ariel. I never buy Ariel, and I only buy Persil in tabs. I am really almost 100% certain it wasn’t Persil or Ariel or anyone super famous like that, but you know what? It may well have been…..Spree? I dunno.
NONE OF THESE DETAILS, WHICH I HAVE RELATED TO YOU, AND MAY BE UNTRUE, ARE LIES. They do not mean I am making it up that my son ate washing powder. This is not what the word “lie” means. The story I have told you is still basically, essentially, ultimately true–but some of the details are now, because much time has passed, slightly hazy. This doesn’t mean I am a “lying whore.” That’s just how the human brain works, how human memory works, when people remember anything. Boring stories, important stories, silly stories. And in fact, sometimes, when you remember a sad, scary, horrific story, you might be more likely to get unimportant details wrong. This is because your brain tries to protect you from the trauma, from the memory, and so suppresses some of your memories.
Another thing the brain might so to protect you from trauma is it might focus on some of the tiny, insignificant details of the event. This coping mechanism is your brain’s attempt to protect you from the trauma lodged in your memory.
Did Amber Heard lie?
“She lied,” my friend says. My friend Katja is a German woman I have known for a few years. We met when our kids–my youngest and her oldest–were born. She is a Spielplatz friend, but also just like me–a feminist and a socialist, a socialist feminist and a feminist socialist. I have seen her at pro-choice rallies and I’ve seen her post angry, angry things about the Mietendeckel. We have a lot in common. I like her a lot. This is the first thing she has ever said to me which I have found to be particularly stupid, or wrong, or evil.
“She lied, and lied, and lied. She lied about everything. She did so much damage to domestic violence victims and rape victims with her continuous lying. It disgusts me, the damage she has done to real victims.”
“What did she lie about?” I ask innocently. I can feel my stomach tensing, my throat closing up, my bile rising. I have felt this a lot in the past few months, since John Depp forced his ex-wife, the young actress Amber Heard, to give testimony about her rape and sexual assault in front of running cameras.
“She lied about everything,” she says.
John Depp’s problem with women
In 2009, when Amber Heard was just 22 years old, she met the actor John Depp, known throughout the world as Johnny Depp, as if he were a toddler, or one of our friends. They met on the film set of the film The Rum Diaries. As one of the producers of the film, he was, strictly speaking, her boss. He was also some twenty-three years older than her. Despite the age gap, or perhaps, considering Depp has never started a relationship with a woman over 25, because of it, they hit it off. However, they were both in relationships and didn’t start dating until, Heard says, some point “around the end of 2011 or 2012.”
Depp and his long-term partner, with whom he had children, Vanessa Paradis, split in 2012. In 2015, Heard and Depp married. Their relationship was obviously volatile and it didn’t last long. On May 23rd, 2016, Heard filed for divorce. Four days later, she obtained a temporary restraining order, because she claimed that Depp had been physically abusing her. To back up her statement, she provided photographic evidence, which was accepted by the legal authorities.
In 2017, Depp and Heard finalized their divorce. They released a statement which read:
Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm.
They agreed to never speak ill of each other, but Depp broke this agreement in October 2018, in a viciously bitter interview which is very open about his contempt for and dislike of Amber Heard. One telling paragraph reads:
“Why didn’t that person speak to the police?” continues Depp. “I mean, they spoke to the police, but the police saw nothing and they offered her an emergency medical technician. She said no. Police see nothing on her. Police see nothing broken in the place, no marks, and then they offer her an EMT to have a look at her and she says no and I don’t know if it was the next day or a couple of days later, but then there was a bruise. There was a red mark and then there was a brown bruise.”
As the journalist who wrote the article so rightly says:
To suggest that a woman, a man or anyone might have made up such a serious allegation is a tremendously dangerous and damaging thing to do.
It certainly sounds, to be honest, pretty defamatory–and downright malicious–to me.
Amber Heard’s Opinion Piece
In December 2018, months after Depp had broken the agreement to not disparage the other party, Amber Heard published an opinion piece for the Washington Post. Not only did she not mention John Depp by name, she also did not refer to herself, in the article, as a victim.
Three sentences of the article were considered defamatory. That is to say, the jury in Fairfax Virginia, in June 2022 found that they were untrue, and also written with malicious intent, and ordered Heard to pay $10million in damages.
The first sentence was the headline, which Heard didn’t even write herself:
I spoke up against sexual violence–and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.
It might boggle the mind to wonder how Heard could be found liable for a sentence she didn’t even write herself. The jury in Fairfax decided that her tweeting this article means she was responsible for the words expressed in the headline itself. And at first, you might feel some sympathy for Depp–an article about sexual violence? Where he is referenced? She might as well have tweeted “Johnny raped me!”
However, the really perverse thing is that the sexual violence referred to in the headline is, for anyone who reads the article, referring to a sexual assault Heard experienced at college. Since then Depp has forced her to recount her rape testimony. He has encouraged his lawyer to use misogynist victim-blaming language to shame Heard for talking about the rape. He has encouraged his many fans with their rape mindset memes and rape glorifying TikToks by referring to the misogynist abuse that Heard suffered over the course of the trial as “love” for him. After all this, we hear the words “sexual violence” and we think of Depp. But this is because he sued her and forced the sexual assault allegations to be made public.
The second sentence she was sued over is perfectly reasonable, totally fair, and should really be completely unproblematic for anyone who thinks abuse is a problem in our society. It’s also an objectively true one, something that was public knowledge at the time:
Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.
The only untrue thing about this sentence is that Heard, although a passionate feminist, had somewhat underestimated just how full the force of our culture’s wrath could be.
And the third sentence, ironically, was proven to be, by the jury’s decision, truer than ever, lol:
I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.
Heard walked into a court building past demonstrators screaming at her that she was a liar and a whore and deserved to be killed and burnt alive. One of them actually dressed herself up as a poo. You can’t help thinking whether this person will ever feel any regret for her despicable behaviour or if she will die thinking that was a humane, dignified way to show solidarity with an actor you admire who has been accused of violence.
Amber Heard walked into a courtroom where the judge allowed her ex-husband to laugh and joke his way through the trial. She sat in the courtroom where the court stenographer openly admitted to being totally enamoured of Depp, she listened as Depp’s lawyer told her that she was lying about the rape because she didn’t take photographs of her bleeding vagina afterwards–and was found guilty by a jury.
This jury contained someone who was not the person who they said they were. Jurors were not protected from the social media hate campaign and openly admit that one of the reasons they found Heard to be unconvincing was because the way she testified made them feel “uncomfortable.” Imagine feeling surprise at finding someone describing being raped and abused by their partner “uncomfortable.” We all had the vantage point of seeing how institutions protect men accused of abuse–but it must be said that in the courthouse in Virginia really went above and beyond.
Malicious defamation?
Intelligent people may find themselves wondering how it can be that objectively true facts are malicious defamation. Three objectively true facts. It is puzzling, to put it mildly.
Amber Heard spoke up against sexual violence–and faced our culture’s wrath. This is, as any internet research or YouTube browsing will show you, objectively true. From the moment she filed for divorce and got her a restraining order, the internet has been full of comments from Depp fans in particular (and, it has to be said, sadly, the general public in general) accusing Heard of being a liar and a whore and a lying whore.
The sentiment that we should improve the way we treat rape and domestic violence victims, is, surely, one that only a sociopath could agree with? I don’t see how anyone can dispute the fact that in 2016, two years before Amber Heard wrote her feminist think-piece, she became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.
I don’t see how this sentence defamed Depp, and I seriously fail to see how the misogynist abuse she has had to endure in 2022 has cleared his name.
It’s ironic that people are obsessed with the idea that Amber Heard is a liar, and yet the three sentences she was found liable for could not be truer than if she had been sued for saying the earth orbits around The Sun. And I don’t know if “ironic” is the right word.
Did Amber Heard lie?
“She lied and lied and lied and lied!” Katja says. “She lied about everything. Even things you think aren’t that important, she lied about them! She claimed she used a make-up palette from Milani which hadn’t been brought out yet. She said she had given money to charity and she hadn’t given them anything! She even said she couldn’t play the guitar–and what turns up? A video of her playing the guitar!”
She lied and lied and lied and lied. The idea that Heard lied about everything is so ingrained in the Heard/Depp narrative, so ingrained, and so unfair. If Heard had, while giving testimony about one of the most traumatic things that had ever happened to her, in front of rolling cameras, in front of a room full of enemies, having just walked past a mob of people holding up signs saying burn the witch and Go Johnny, got the name of the brand of make-up she had used to conceal bruises wrong, that wouldn’t have been a lie. It would have been a mistake, a tiny insignificant detail, the most normal thing in the world, to forget a tiny detail like that so many years after the event. Or, of course, maybe due to the nature of the trauma, her memory surrounding the events was extra hazy and confused–a normal, natural, typical coping mechanism.
But the thing is, she never even mentioned the make-up company, Milani cosmetics, by name. Her lawyer held up an example concealer kit, to show the jury how Heard hid the bruises and marks she got from being beaten by Depp so much. Milani decided to profit off of the misogynist feeding frenzy and released an upbeat TikTok, comparing Amber Heard’s testimony with images of their intern jauntily walking down the corridor and looking up their back catalogue in a computer database. You can hear a song in the background, merrily singing about how the said intern is an international superspy. It’s a funny, cute, sweet, quirky true crime type short video, designed to go viral and paint Amber Heard as a liar and deliberately untruthful, duplicitous. Even if Heard had got the name wrong, it would not have been a lie. But she didn’t. In fact, her exact words in court, when under cross examination, were:
This is what I’m talking about, a colour correction kit. This is not, obviously, the exact one I used to carry. But I used to carry it with me all the time.
Intelligent, reasonable people might find themselves wondering how, exactly, Heard’s legal team were expected to go and buy themselves the exact colour concealer kit Heard used over the course of her volatile relationship with Depp? Do the Depp supporters and truth-seekers and social media PR people at Milani cosmetics seriously think her lawyer should have built a time machine so she could go back in time and buy the exact same make-up kit used during her marriage?
My mother was born in 1955 and always called Tippex “Snopake.” It would never have occurred to me to accuse my mother of lying? But where Heard and Depp are concerned, it seems to me that Heard really cannot be believed–every word she says is twisted and distrusted–whereas Depp himself, well. His words are basically Gospel!
If the Milani “lie” seems ridiculous enough, the other lies Heard is accused of are little better. She promised to donate $7million to charity and pledged to pay it in instalments, a totally normal process when paying large sums to good causes. She has already donated $1.3 million–a huge sum, huger still if you think of how much money she has in comparison to Depp–this would probably be the equivalent of his selling half his properties and giving them to children in need.
But due to the post separation legal abuse she has suffered at the hands of her vindictive vengeful ex-husband, she has been unable to pay it in full. (I wonder how much, if any, of the $8million Depp is going to get from her for the “defamation” he has “suffered” will be given to charity?) If you google the words pledge and donation it becomes quickly clear that many people, including Amber Heard, use the words interchangeably.
And what about the guitar? As proof that she is a hideous liar, a lying whore and an all-round dishonest, untruthful, slippery person, people often claim that she lied about being able to play the guitar. Their evidence? A clip of her pretending to play the guitar in a film. People who love Depp and hate Heard sneer at her for getting the words pledge and donate mixed up, seem, however, to have never heard of the word “acting.” One of the many, many click-baity YouTube videos “exposing” Amber as a liar for this actually had as the first comment on the video the following sentence: “Wow, if she can lie about that what else could she possibly be lying about?”
Did John Depp lie?
Amber’s words, Amber’s testimony is immediately mistrusted. Tiny inconsistencies are seen as deliberate lies, and these deliberate lies are painted as “evidence” that she lied, and, even, abused him. If Depp was judged the way people judge her, they would claim that his defence would be seen as an outright lie. He fantasized about drowning her, burning her, and then raping her burnt corpse to check if she was dead, because he liked Monty Python films,
There are no rape jokes in Monty Python. There are no necrophilia jokes in Monty Python. It was shocking for its time and place–which was the BBC in the 1970s. The sketch Depp is referencing, however, should be seen by some, or preferably all, of his supporters. It has nothing to do with his violent murderous fantasies about his young fiancée, and everything to do with how easy it is for stupid people to gang together and become evil–evilly joining together and murdering an innocent woman because it is easy and enjoyable.
But Depp, as well as having the same inconsistencies in his own testimony as Heard has, has also been caught lying. In the UK trial, he denied ever having headbutted her. When played the audio where he admits to having headbutted her “in the fucking forehead”, he quickly changes his tune and says that he did headbutt her–but it was an accident. Anthony Bridgerton voice: Ah.
Probably one of the most interesting things though, is that Depp’s voice is heard, Depp’s words are believed, almost automatically. Amber Heard is treated with great distrust and bad faith–whereas people project onto Depp a believability a trustworthiness which isn’t even there. Yes, guys, let’s do it. Let’s discuss the dog poo stuff.
One of the main reasons people hate Amber Heard is because Depp says she pooed in his bed. Wait, stop. It wasn’t his bed. It was THEIR bed. It was her bed. One of the main reasons people hate Amber Heard is because Depp says she pooed in her own bed.
Wait, stop. He says he THINKS she pooed in her own bed. He never got the poo checked for DNA. It is literally just an idea HE has in his head. A paranoid idea, to be honest.
Wait, stop. Her dog had had diarrhoea and Depp, upon first finding the shit in their bed, didn’t even blame her for it anyways.
WAIT STOP! There is even SMS evidence that a few years before this event took place (inside Depp’s head), he sent his assistant a message, saying he should leave a human poo outside the bedroom door, so Amber would think it was dog poo and clear it up. Depp thought that would be funny.
“I mean, how can you trust someone who pooed the bed to get revenge on their partner?” Katja asks me.
“But there’s no evidence she did it?” I reply.
“Depp swore it under oath!” Katja says.
I could go on like this all day. Depp’s words, his paranoid fantasies, his bitter, vindictive misogynist delusions become the truth. Amber’s truth–even when backed up by evidence and probability–is twisted into lies and proof that she is an evil person, deliberately evil, particularly calculating.
Did Amber Heard commit perjury?
Two other “lies” of hers, become, when examined properly, merely more examples of woman-hating propaganda. The first one is the “perjury in Australia.” Any amount of time spent on social media trying to debunk DV and rape victim-blaming myths will inevitably end up with you being told that Heard is guilty of “perjury in Australia” and hopefully will go to prison for it. Perjury in Australia is just another example of her conniving, lying ways.
But the truth is that both Heard and Depp owned those dogs, and mistakenly took them into Australia without filling in the customs forms properly. It is an arrogant, vandalistic act, and it is naughty as fuck. But it isn’t evil, and it doesn’t mean she is more likely to lie about rape or abuse. It’s the kind of selfish, thoughtless, reckless behaviour Hollywood celebrities are always getting in trouble for–and Depp is as much to blame as she is.
We should condemn them for it–if Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber or Paris Hilton behaved this way, we would condemn them for it. What we wouldn’t do is think it means anything about whether or not Depp raped and beat Amber. It’s completely and utterly irrelevant to the case at hand.
Depp, however, after he allowed his fifteen-year-old daughter to “date” a 23-year-old man, lied to the police to protect his daughter’s partner. I can’t help thinking that lying to the police about the statutory rape of your own daughter has more relevance to the story than ticking the wrong box on a dog visa form. It shows he is prepared to lie to the authorities to protect men who may get in trouble for sexual crimes. If he is prepared to do this for his daughter’s partner, wouldn’t it stand to reason that he would expect his friends and employees to do the same for him?
But Depp’s lies are unimportant.
Did Amber Heard steal a story about sexual assault?
And what about the ex-assistant’s sexual assault story? “She lied about the rape; she stole her assistant’s sexual assault story!” Katja says viciously.
Amber Heard’s ex-assistant, Katie James, was also once, like many women the world over, the victim of rape. However, she was raped at knifepoint, and by a stranger. Heard in contrast was raped by her own partner, in her own home. It’s not clear what made James so certain her rape by a stranger at knifepoint was the inspiration needed for Amber to make up a story about being raped with a bottle as a weapon by her life partner. Especially since James had not even read Amber’s sexual assault testimony when she came out with her paranoid delusion conspiracy theory.
It says something about how much we hate women, distrust their stories, and despise victims, that even fairly intelligent people like Katja think it is more probable that a woman would need to steal details about a rape from an ex-employee than that admit that rape and sexual assaults are commonplace ordeals which affect many women, some of whom will know each other.
“Believe Women” has been ever so subtly twisted into “Believe all Women”–and then misrepresented by victim-blaming misogynists to mean “Women never lie”. But it does not mean that every time a woman says she has been raped or attacked by someone, that person should be thrown in jail. What it means is that we should believe women–like we do men. We should listen to what they are saying. We should give their words weight, let their version of events exist. We should stop hating them, and stop fantasizing about them being liars and whores.
According to Roman law, women were not allowed to give evidence in court., This was because although women were considered Roman citizens, they obtained their position only through their husbands. They were not allowed to be judges, lawyers, politicians–or witnesses. “The woman is incapable of being a witness in any form of jurisprudence where witnesses are required. “
In first century Judea, women were not even considered reliable witnesses. The Jewish historian Josephus said:
Let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex.
How much has changed? Google “Are women liars?”, and what do you get? An article in The Scotsman claiming that “96% of women are liars, honest!” Or Vanguard News explaining: “Why women re such good liars!” Go on YouTube, and you find a stand-up set from the comedian Chris Rock, who, by the way, is 100% convinced that Heard shat the bed, where he says men lie the most, but women tell the biggest lies:
Who’s the biggest liars, men or women? Men lie the most, women tell the biggest lie. Men lie all the time…. (…)….Man, we lie all the time! We lie all the time! You know what a man’s lie is like? A man’s lie is like I was at Tony’s house…(..)….THAT’S a man’s lie! A woman’s lie is like: it’s your baby!
Isn’t it ironic?
She lied and lied and lied and lied, people say, intelligent people, even, sometimes. Even feminist socialists and socialist feminists believe that Amber Heard is a liar. They say she’s lying about the make-up, so what else would she lie about? They say she’s lying about the dog poo. Camille Vasquez said in court: If she lied about being raped, what else would she lie about? It’s a gut-wrenching moment, and I don’t understand how anyone can watch it and not cry.
Meanwhile, people think everything Depp says is true. If Depp speaks, his words become truth, he is almost like God in that way. They think John Depp is telling the truth when he says that Amber Heard, like some kind of supernaturally skilled ninja assassin, threw a liquor bottle across the room, spinning through the air, to land on his hand, perfectly severing part of his finger. His word becomes truth, he owns his own story.
Amber Heard, meanwhile, is guilty of malicious defamation, because of three objectively true sentences, one of which she never even wrote herself. Her words are twisted, her tongue is inherently evil. The hatred you feel for Amber is the same hatred you felt for Eve, when she got Adam to eat the apple, or all the witches you burnt. It’s an old hatred. Your distrust of her is a distrust of all women. Of all whores, all lying whores. You think she is lying because you think women shouldn’t be allowed to speak the truth in public.
#NeverFearTruth is the hashtag that Incels, liberal feminists, Johnny Depp and Kevin Federline are all using to tear women apart and to paint all women, all victims, as liars. The misogynist backlash towards #metoo, Amber Heard and all victims, male or female, is as duplicitous as it is evil.
The irony is, the world calls her a liar, but in fact, she is being punished and humiliated for speaking truth to power. One day, one day soon, Alanis Morrisette is going to have to bring out an updated version of that song.
Jacinta Nandi lives in Berlin and thinks ableism is a fucking disease. Her latest book, Die schlechteste Hausfrau der Welt was published in October 2020.